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Those of you who own an Xperia X10 phone will be bashing your heads against a wall in frustration — we recommend tying a pillow to your forehead — as Sony Ericsson has announced it’s delaying the Android 2.1 Eclair update yet again. It’ll arrive in late October at the very earliest.
In a blog post, Sony Ericsson told furious Xperia X10, X10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro owners that it had to postpone the start of the Android roll-out from the end of September, as it previously promised. The new plan is to start the Android 2.1 roll-out from the end of October.
But don’t expect the update even then — there’ll be a phased roll-out that means different configurations of the phone get Eclair at different times.
In addition, anyone locked to a mobile network contract will have to wait even longer, as the update will need to be checked by the operators before pushed over the air to your handsets. So based on networks’ previous tardiness with updates, it could be next year before you get 2.1, which even budget £99 phones are starting to come out with right now.
“We are of course not happy about the change of launch timing,” said Sony Ericsson’s Rikard Skogberg, “but we have had to spend some additional time on the software to really makes sure we roll out with the right quality and user experience.”
As you might imagine, Xperia owners weren’t particularly happy with Sony Ericsson for the delay of the upgrade. Many demanded that instead of 2.1, it should jump to Android 2.2. Eclair is already about a year old, with top phones such as the HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy S already on or about to get 2.2.
The most important issue for many Xperia X10 owners is the broken promise. Some were annoyed by the slowness of the update, but were content to wait until this month. Now it’s been even longer delayed, it wouldn’t be a surprise if many angry Xperia owners moved to new phones from the likes of HTC and Nokia. We’ve had a bunch of long-suffering X10ers vent their feelings about the lack of Android upgrade, so is this the last straw? Comments welcome.
